Rashi's Daughters, Book III: Rachel (51 page)

Rachel was too consumed by nostalgia and regret to notice the man who’d stopped at her side. A soft cough above made her aware of his presence, and she quickly backed away. But he closed the distance between them.

“Mistress Rachel?” he asked.

Dumbfounded, she nodded and looked up at a dark-haired stranger. His wide-brimmed hat was pulled down low over his forehead, shading his face—the most handsome face she’d seen in some time.

“My name is Dovid. You’ve been looking for me?”

twenty-eight

The door banged open just as Salomon was rubbing his eyes and collecting the manuscript pages scattered across the table. After he’d put them away, a habit he maintained despite the many cats that now kept the yeshiva free from mice, he’d hoped to take a nap before services.

“Papa, Papa.” Rachel raced into the salon and gave him a hug. “I have marvelous news.”

Salomon smiled and resumed his seat. He hadn’t seen Rachel this happy in . . . well, in a long time. “You and Moses have completed Shemiah’s engagement contract.”

“We have, but that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”

“So tell me.”

“I’ve finally found the fuller I’ve been looking for.” Rachel saw her father’s doubtful expression, so she hurried on. “Dovid’s not like the other apprentices. He’s been fulling for fifteen years, since he was a child. He knows more than most masters, and he’s going to work for me.”

Salomon raised an eyebrow. “Dovid? Where’s he from?”

“He’s from Rouen.” Grimness replaced Rachel’s enthusiasm. “When he was a boy, marauders attacked the Jewish Quarter and massacred its inhabitants, including his parents. The surviving children were raised as
minim
, with Dovid taken in by a monastery. That’s where he learned to full cloth.”

“And where he learned to worship the Hanged One,” Salomon said. “You’re sure he doesn’t mind working for you?”

“Quite sure. You see, he wasn’t happy with the monks—that’s why he left them and came to Troyes—and these days he doesn’t go to church much anymore.” Her eyes shone with excitement. “Papa, maybe I can bring him back to Judaism.”

“Does Dovid have a shop already?” Salomon suspected not, but he asked to see if Rachel’s focus was in the clouds or on earth.

“
Non
, but that’s a good thing.” Rachel was ready for her father’s skepticism. “We’re going to build a fulling mill in Ramerupt, like at the monastery. Dovid already found the perfect site—a narrow stream, just before it widens out into one of Joheved’s creeks.”

Salomon looked at Rachel with respect. “And before then?”

“Until the mill is ready, Dovid and his apprentices will walk the cloth in troughs. I’m sure Eliezer can get us all the fuller’s earth we need.”

“Speaking of Eliezer, we have another matter to discuss.”

“
Oui
, Papa.” Rachel sat down beside him.

“Some women, perhaps most women, don’t mind being separated while their husbands travel for business. But I perceive that you are not one of them.”

She nodded.

“You should return to Sepharad with Eliezer,” he admonished her. “A wife’s place is with her husband, not her father.”

A giant knot twisted Rachel’s stomach. “Papa, Mama asked me to take care of you, and I won’t leave until you’re healthy again. Besides, Eliezer doesn’t need me in Toledo. He has work there that doesn’t include me.”

Papa would never understand how she abhorred the separate spheres that men and women occupied in Sepharad—men studying, praying, and doing business while women remained at home, ignorant. She would never subject herself, or her daughter, to that life. Papa was scowling at her, so she decided to give him a reason he would understand.

“I will not share Eliezer with another woman, and I know he has another wife there.”

“He told you this?” Eliezer had certainly not told Salomon.

“
Non
.” She paused, her chin quivering, to control her emotions. “I questioned some merchants from Toledo this summer.”

“Are you going to tell him that you know?” Salomon was filled with an aching sadness. In her determination to ferret out her husband’s perfidy, his daughter had not considered the pain that such knowledge would cause her. Salomon held out his arms to comfort her, miserable that he, who had always tried to make her happy, was helpless to do so now.

“I’m not sure. I haven’t told anyone except you.”

“You realize that because your husband has taken another wife, you can demand a divorce without forfeiting your
ketubah
.”

Rachel nodded. Until Rabbenu Gershom, Light of the Exile, issued his decree a hundred years ago, a Jewish man might take more than one wife, as the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob did.

“But, Papa, I can’t go before the
beit din
and tell them, ‘I find this man repulsive; I can no longer live with him.’ It’s not true.” She found Eliezer as attractive as always, curse him.

“You don’t need to. Once Eliezer admits to another wife, the
beit din
will insist that he divorce one or the other.”

“I don’t want a divorce,” she wailed. “I want my husband to live in Troyes with me year-round. That’s why I’ve worked so hard on our woolens business.”

Salomon sighed heavily. Rachel usually got what she wanted, especially from men, but he didn’t see that happening in this case. Eliezer had asked him to talk to Rachel, to convince her to travel to Toledo, but that wasn’t going to happen either.
Such willful children, my daughter and son-in-law, each one the spoiled youngest child of their family.

Yet though he suffered for his daughter’s plight, he had to be honest and acknowledge his relief that she would be staying with him in Troyes again this year.

 

Rachel took a deep breath as she realized that, for the first time in her marriage, she was going to deliberately lie to her husband.
But hasn’t he been lying to me all year, deceiving me about Gazelle?
Her guilt hardened into resentment. Who knows how long he’d been living with that woman, using the bed with her?
Mon Dieu, maybe she was carrying his child. Maybe they already had children.
A calculating smile played on her lips. Pesach was going to Toledo with Eliezer this year; there would be no more secrets when he returned.

So when the Cold Fair ended and Eliezer began laying out items to take to Toledo, she put on her most frustrated expression. “Curse these snowstorms.” She slammed her fist against the wall. “The fulling mill should have been finished weeks ago, and now I find that they’ve only just begun building the waterwheel.”

Eliezer didn’t look up from his packing. “Don’t worry. It will be done when you come back.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t leave until it’s built and I’m satisfied that it’s functioning properly.”

“What?” He stared at her in alarm. “I thought this mill was Joheved’s responsibility.”

“
Oui
, it’s on her estate, but Joheved knows nothing about fulling cloth.” Rachel tried to keep calm. She must appear disappointed and not lose her temper no matter how angry Eliezer gets. “It’s not fair, but I have to be here to supervise the workers.”

“Isn’t that Dovid’s job?” Eliezer said with sarcasm. With all Rachel’s talk about the new fuller, Dovid this and Dovid that, you’d think he could at least run the mill by himself.

“Eliezer, please be reasonable. Dovid is just our employee.” She carefully said “our” instead of
my
. “No matter how much I want to, I can’t disappear and let him run the business, not until I’m convinced that he’s reliable.”

He nodded slowly. “And how long will that take?”

“If it stops snowing long enough for us to start producing decent woolens, material worth dying with indigo and kermes . . .” She paused for effect. “I might be able to leave with the pilgrims and get to Toledo by Passover.”

When he said nothing, she came up behind him and put her arms around his chest. “Maybe sooner.”

To her relief, he turned around and began kissing her. “I suppose it’s wise not to jeopardize all the work you’ve done, not so close to reaching your goal.”

“I’m going to miss you terribly,” she whispered. Though she never intended to go to Toledo, that much was true.

 

Unfortunately Rachel’s complaint about the weather was also true. Joheved pressed her villeins into service building the fulling mill, and whenever snow delayed its construction, Dovid taught them the fulling trade.

As soon as she’d hired Dovid, Rachel began stockpiling unfinished woven cloth. Now, bundled in furs, she watched as Dovid directed two men to unroll a bolt of broadcloth into a long rectangular trough filled with fuller’s wash, a mixture of warm water, sheep fat, fuller’s earth, and urine. When the material was completely submerged, Dovid directed the men to climb into the steaming vat and trample the cloth. Again Rachel thanked Heaven for giving her a noble sister; Joheved’s villeins owed three days of work a week doing whatever she wanted, from building a mill to digging fuller’s earth to collecting piss.

The mixture stank worse than Simon’s dyes, but the men seemed content to stomp back and forth through the warm liquid on this freezing day. Soon another cloth was undergoing similar treading in a second trough. Dovid carefully observed the four walkers, occasionally directing them to turn the cloth over. At the end of the day, clean water was bucketed into the trough until the foul-smelling wash was rinsed away.

“That’s why fullers’ workshops are best located near a source of running water,” Dovid explained to Rachel the next morning as fresh, warm wash refilled the troughs. “In cold weather like this, it will take five days of treading until the cloth is completely scoured and thickened. Even in summer, it takes three days.”

“Why so long?” she asked, pretending ignorance of the fulling procedure.

Dovid was happy to educate her. “Fulling accomplishes three goals. First it cleanses the cloth of dirt and grease. Second, and most important, it felts the cloth by forcing the fine, curly wool fibers to interlace and mat together. This gives the cloth its necessary cohesion and strength.”

“And third?”

“During fulling the cloth shrinks and compresses until it becomes impervious to weather and so durable that one mantle may last a man’s lifetime.” Dovid’s face shone with pride.

“What happens next?” Rachel just wanted to hear him talk.

“Once it’s fulled, we stretch the cloth out to dry on great wooden tentering frames, held tight by tenterhooks.” Dovid smiled and said, “It takes a strong man to lift the wet cloth and stretch it so taut that all wrinkles are removed.”

“I look forward to seeing it done.”

“While the cloth is still wet, we repair minor holes, remove knots or burrs, and shear off loose ends.”

Rachel blinked as snow blew into her eyes. “How can you do this in bad weather? Won’t the cloth take forever to dry?”

“Most fullers erect a tent over the frames, but your sister’s steward says we can use the barns.”

Tentering in the barns became the norm as one snowstorm after another descended on Ramerupt. The year before last had also been stormy, resulting in severe crop failures, and with only the previous year’s surplus grain stored, Joheved’s estate began to anxiously anticipate more poor harvests. But Rachel was too occupied with fulling, and the fuller, to notice.

Once the tentered cloth was dry, the next steps, teaseling and shearing, required more skill than strength and stamina. Dovid was thrilled to discover that Joheved’s shepherds needed merely a little extra training.

He gathered them around the stretched cloths and held up a small wooden frame packed with prickly teasel plants. As he gently pushed the device across the cloth, he explained, “Our goal is to raise the nap of the cloth, to lift up all the straggly loose ends of the wool fibers so they can be shorn.”

Dovid then took up a pair of shears and demonstrated how to cut off the raised nap. As the others watched closely, he repeated the process of teaseling and cropping until he was satisfied. Then he took Rachel’s hand and placed it on the finished textile.

She gasped with delight and bent down to scrutinize the material. Dovid’s efforts had totally obliterated any sign of the weave, producing a texture nearly as fine as silk. No wonder he was a master fuller; look at the dexterity it took to crop the cloth so evenly without damaging it.

The sheep shearers crowded around to examine Dovid’s shears and study the results he’d produced. This was clearly a skill worth learning, one a man could ply in Troyes whenever he needed extra income. Several women nodded at each other. Strength was unnecessary for this part of fulling, and a gentle hand might be an advantage.

 

In mid-February the weather cleared for the entire week before Purim, and finally the fulling mill could be finished. Miriam was already in Ramerupt for the lambing, but Shemiah, Rivka, and even Salomon rode out to see the new contrivance in operation.

At first view the fulling mill was a disappointment, for it looked exactly like a common grain mill, waterwheel and all. But inside, instead of a grindstone, the waterwheel powered great wooden hammers. Below the hammers sat tubs to hold the cloth and wash liquid, their edges somewhat rounded on the side away from the hammer, so that the cloth was gradually repositioned, ensuring that it was milled evenly.

“You see, Papa,” Rachel waxed enthusiastic. “The fulling mill increases our efficiency at least threefold, and this is in addition to the improvement we’ve achieved with the horizontal loom.”

“It is a great success.” He nodded in appreciation. “Soon you will be a very rich woman.”

Rachel looked across the room, where Joheved, Meir, and Isaac were talking. “My sister and I now control the entire cloth-making process, raw wool to dyed cloth. As our enterprise grows, our children’s and grandchildren’s futures will be assured.”